The Three Stooges and their Cushman Scooters

The Three Stooges made hundreds of short films, with all kinds of vehicles, from planes, trains, and automobiles, to submarines and rocket ships, all with variations on the makes and models, but when it came to scooters The Stooges always rode Cushmans. The Cushman Auto-Glide was a perfect match for The Stooges and the US Military.

(via NebraskaHistory.org)

While the little Cushman scooters found a ready civilian market in the late 1930s, it was during World War II that the company’s name and products spread around the world. More than 15,000 of its two- and three-wheeled vehicles were produced for all branches of the armed forces, used in camps, bases and ports worldwide. The Airborne Scotters had a parachute hook built into the machine. The Airborne was heavier than a regular Cushman scooter, with bigger gears in the transmission and made of heavy iron, solidly welded together. The vehicle was built strongly enough to withstand damage if the parachute didn’t open. The machine might be bent, but it would still be drivable.

The company also was one of the three largest producers of bomb nose fuses during World War II, making more than 8.5 million of them during the war and winning Army and Navy “E” awards for outstanding quality and quantity.

Here’s a short colorized clip from the 1937 film The Sitter Downers ; written by Mitch Shapiro {mshapiro@a.crl.com}, which shows Moe, Larry, and irreplaceable Curly on one of their Cushman Auto-Glides.